Listen: Tariff Battle With Mexico Ends, But What About Trade War With China?

"Support for this podcast and the following message come from the university of Maryland where the founders of Google Oculus and squarespace got their started. Find out how you MD can start up your next adventure at you and you MD dot com. That's why oh, you and you MD dot com, the tear of battle with Mexico appears to be over, at least for now but another front in the trade war is still wide open. The Trump administration is looking for a deal that would end tariffs on more than two hundred billion dollars worth of Chinese goods. Those measures and China's counter moves are starting to show new effects on the US economy, NPR chief economic correspondent scored Scott Horsely is with us now. Good morning, Scott. Good morning ritual. So if you're Chinese trade, negotiation, what did you learn a negotiator? What did you learn by watching President Trump in this particular dispute with Mexico? The first thing to say Rachel, is that there are limits to this analogy obviously, the trade battles with Mexico and China are not a dental so they do have to be weighed independently, but there's no question. China is watching what happened with Mexico. For clues about the president's negotiating style, and what clue they draw really depends on how you view the Mexican agreement that was struck last Friday. If you think Mexico caved, the message to China is Trump is serious, and China better make some changes if it wants to get tariff relief if on the other hand, you think Trump back down after Mexico, essentially repackaged concessions it had already made. Well, that's a roadmap that China itself is used in the past over the weekend. We also saw the president boasting on Twitter that Mexico is going to buy a lot of agriculture goods from the US. That's not anything New Mexico was already a big customer. And so was China before this trade war all started. But that does jest another path to win favor with President Trump is to buy a lot of farm products. So we heard from the Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin he spoke to CNBC over the weekend. Let's listen to what he had to say. We had a deal is almost ninety percent done China wanted to go back. Words on certain things we've, we've stopped negotiating, and if China wants to move forward with the deal where prepared to move forward, if China doesn't want to move forward. Then President Trump is perfectly happy to move forward with tariffs to rebalance the relationship, what's gone on there. I mean, have they really stopped negotiating? They have remember this all started with concerns in the US about lack of intellectual property protection in China, the force transfer of American technological know-how, then last winter Trump, and she met app Chinese president Xi Jinping met in South America, and Trump agreed to delay escalating. The tariffs while negotiators went to work on a deal. There were lots rounds of talks both in Washington and Beijing there seemed to be some progress, but then last month the US I'd accused China of backtracking, and since then there haven't been any new talks, the higher tariffs have kicked in there may be some. Disagreement going on within the Chinese government, just as there is here in this country about which of those two paths secretary Mnuchin laid out to follow who specifically in the US and China is hurting right now. Because of because of us, we'll both countries are paying a price. In fact, the whole world is paying a price last week. The World Bank, led by President Trump's handpicked president David Malpas warned that trade tensions are hurting global growth here in this country. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank estimates the economy grew at an annual rate of just one point four percent in the current quarter less than half the pace of growth in the first quarter, of course last Friday. We got that much weaker than expected jobs report, China's well aware of all this. In fact, there are some reports that Chinese negotiators took a harder line last month precisely because they thought the US economy was weakening, and that President Trump wouldn't have the stomach for an all out trade war. Now, that may have been a miscalculation on China's part, but there's no question that trade tensions are taking a toll these two leaders. Chinese president Xi Jinping. And President Trump are going to meet at the g twenty right? That's right. And, you know, usually there is a lot of ground work done ahead of high level meeting like that. But that's not the way President Trump likes to operate he prefers to improvise. So it's going to be Trump and she one on one buckle your seatbelts, NPR's, Scott Harsing. Thanks got. You're welcome."